Re: Insteon unreliability with simultaneous switch presses

[nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Dave Houston)]

Eric <eric.allman@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>I have my house wired up with Insteon.  In several places I have two
>switches next to each other that are also linked to other switches.
>If you press both switches at the same time then the signals are not
>delivered reliably to the other end ? only one gets through.  I can
>confirm this on my Mac (running Indigo) ? only one of the devices is
>left with the correct status.  If I send an explicit status request
>the display changes to the actual state of the device.  My reading of
>the spec is that this "cannot happen", but like so many things that
>can't happen, it does, repeatedly.
>
>More info: in all cases these are ICON relays; I haven't tried buying
>the full-price switch to see if somehow the retransmission is actually
>only supported on the high end.  The switches are all firmware rev 28
>with the exception of one that is rev 27.
>
>Questions:
>(1) Will switching to the high-end switches fix this problem?
>(2) Is there some sniffer software I can run on either a Mac or a
>FreeBSD machine (I can dig out a Windows laptop and a Linux machine
>too) that will show the low-level traffic on the wire so I can verify
>that the retransmissions are not being sent?  I'm using a PowerLinc
>2413U.
>(3) Is there any other magic I can perform to fix this problem?

\I'm not sure what spec you are reading but IIRC the signal will only be
repeated 5 times. Unless you are quickly tapping/releasing the switches,
your finger is probably depressing them for more than 5 transmissions - the
signals are sent very quickly, taking only 2 powerline cycles (just over 30
mS) per code.

I doubt that the high-end switches will change anything.

I'm unaware of any sniffer apps although I haven't tried to keep up with
Insteon developments recently. It would have to rely on a PLM for input so
I'm not sure what you would gain. It's a fairly simple task to view the raw
signals on an oscilloscope - a storage scope might record a lengthy sequence
- but I doubt you could decode them visually. You can see some 'scope
screenshots at...

     http://davehouston.org/insteon.htm

I think you're asking a lot but you might get more recent information by
posting to Smarthome's Insteon forum.

     http://www.smarthome.com/forum/default.asp